The Devil You Know
by Lewascan2
Summary: Take one paranoid munchkin D&D player, stick him in an unoptimized role-play-based character's body, throw him into an illuminati-wannabe-run death world at Level 1; stir well; then sit back and watch the show. "Given a choice? I'll side with the Chaotic Neutral villains over the Lawful Stupid heroes any day, thank-you very much!" (Worm/D&D 5e Warlock SI)


**Disclaimer: I don't own D&D, which is the brain-child of Gary Gygax and Wizards of the Coast, nor do I have any claim to the web-serial, Worm, which is the work of Wildbow; I'm just messing around in Wildbow's sandbox.**

(/o0o/)

[**Infernal: 1.1 or "Getting My Smokey Bear On"**]

Looking up at a forest shrouded in night from where I uncomfortably lay, I decided that this was probably going to be one of _those_ dreams.

By "those", I of course meant the really vivid ones that somehow stick with you for the rest of your life for being so damn memorable.

I could still remember a particular childhood memory of a nightmare from when I was like ten years old. It involved a pair of large, black dogs, grimm-like, chasing me about my neighborhood, as I moon-hopped just out of the way of their lunges at just the right times. I remember them chasing me all the way home in the dream, into my house, and cornering me atop my parents' bed.

Not fun. No siree Bob.

Glancing about at the truly Slender-man-worthy forest surrounding me on all sides , I decided this would _definitely_ be one of _those_ dreams.

Right now, a cold sweat was beginning to build up on the back of my neck, as I heaved myself to my feet from where I'd awoken on the hard, cold forest ground against the exposed roots of a large tree. Leaves and dirt rustled and shifted off of me, and I could feel the weight of a large backpack of some kind strapped over my shoulders.

A cold wind whistled through the air, abruptly setting my teeth to chattering and my arms to rubbing against the oddly rough fabric I was wearing, which (now that I was paying attention to it) itched something fierce. I scratched at my arms and torso with a grimace; the fabric definitely didn't feel like the cotton shirts I preferred.

A glance at myself also revealed that I was wearing some kind of stiffened, flexible breastplate with connected shoulder pads. I felt at them for a minute and determined that they were… leather? In fact, these looked like very _familiar_ leather articles.

I pinched myself on the cheek once, blinking furiously. No effect. I quelled a sense of rising panic with a series of slow deep breaths.

In every lucid dream I'd ever had, I'd been able to, without exception, consciously wake myself up by blinking hard three times in succession.

Which meant… this wasn't a dream.

My throat suddenly felt dry for more reasons than the cold night air I was inhaling, and my eyes darted about. As I furiously smacked any lingering dirt and leaves off of my back and pants, I warily glanced about for other creatures, paying as much attention to the sights, sounds and smells that I could gather.

After all, I was alone in the middle of a dark forest. That was the stuff horror movies were made of.

After a minute of slowly turning in place and listening, I determined that I was, at least, relatively alone for the time being, not even a nearby wild animal to disturb me thankfully.

Of course, during this time, a few more things quickly became apparent and sealed the nails on my metaphorical (and possibly soon literal) coffin.

For one, I had horns… and a fucking tail.

The pair of horns, which I'd noticed when running a trembling hand through my hair, were maybe an inch thick each with a hard, ridged surface. They started at the upper edges of both sides of my forehead and then ran back, pressed hard against my scalp, till they both curled up a little at the upper back half of my head to either side of where someone might secure a high bun of their hair.

The tail made itself known quite bit more promptly than the horns, and was, in fact, the reason I was stressing and discovered my new horns in the first place. At what I estimated was easily four feet long, the tail itself was only about as thick as the horns with a little arrow-head-shaped tip like what one would expect to see on the tail of a classic cartoon devil. The tail had revealed itself by furiously whipping about and curling around my legs in response to my tenseness and stress.

Naturally, all it did was make things worse with its discovery. I found that I could control the damn thing to some degree, but it was basically an entirely new limb for which I had absolutely zero muscle memory. The best I could do was basically make it flail about in different directions (and inconsistently at that).

For second, the forest around me was not as dark as I was expecting, mostly for the reason that it was hued to my sight in shades of grey, not a speck of other color to be seen. Beyond a certain distance though, the odd sight just suddenly… cut out into a void of pure blackness that retreated at my approach while closing in where I wasn't. The "grey-sight" spread out from me to a pretty decent radius, what I was estimating was the height of my two-story house twice-over, give or take a little.

So, about 60 feet, and that set off even more alarm bells in my head right there, because I _recognized_ that shit! In fact, I'd pointed out how creepy/cool that stuff was when playing a character with it.

Leather armor, horns, a devil-like tail, weirdly limited, yet effective, ability to see in the dark… and an odd instinctive sense of where everything was around me, as if I could somehow see in every direction at once and yet… wasn't?

It all added up.

I was somehow a _Tiefling_, and not just any Tiefling…

I dug into one of my itchy pants' pockets, feeling out a small lump. In my retreating hand, there was now a small, 1-inch in diameter crystalline orb, somehow glittering in what must had been all but utter darkness.

An Orb arcane focus.

I was wearing the body of an adventurer, a character I'd made and played for a D&D 5e campaign. An urchin warlock, who I'd built more around a role-play concept than a min-maxed ideal channel of "ULTMAT POWA!" Leucis Nemeia, otherwise known as "Creed", didn't even have proficiency in Arcana… in a campaign where I was the only dedicated spellcaster… So, yeah.

To be completely fair to Leucis, however, I did roll for his ability scores, and the results were, overall, worth more than if I'd gone for point-buy. Things had worked out so that he started with 18 Charisma as a warlock, which, in my mind, gave me a little leeway to take more Feats than ability score improvements in the future. After all, I had a party, who could cover for my deficiencies in a primarily teamwork-based game…

Not here, though. I was currently _alone_ at…

I abruptly experienced what it must be like to taste purple in the form of a weird _flash_ of information, gaining a sort-of innate awareness of a series of… _statistics_, for lack of a better word, that flickered across the surface of my thoughts, somehow completely legible, and they gave me only grim news.

**Name: Leucis Nemeia "Creed. Self Insert."**

**Age: 21 (19 physically)**

**Class: Warlock 1 (Great Old One)**

**Background: Urchin**

**Race: Tiefling**

**Alignment: Chaotic Good**

**EXP: 0**

**Armor Class: 13 (+1 from Armor)**

**Hit Points: 9**

**Hit Dice: 1d8 (8+1)**

**Speed: 30 ft.**

**Initiative: +2**

**Inspiration: 0**

**Proficiency Bonus: +2 ("*" indicates use of bonus)**

**Height: 4'9"**

**Weight: 110 lb.**

**Status:**

**Ability Scores**

**STR: 11 (+0)**

**DEX: 15 (+2)**

**CON: 12 (+1)**

**INT: 13 (+1)**

**WIS: 13 (+1)**

**CHA: 18 (+4)**

**Saving Throws**

**STR: +0**

**DEX: +2**

**CON: +1**

**INT: +1**

**WIS: +3***

**CHA: +6***

**Skills**

**Acrobatics: +2**

**Animal Handling: +1**

**Arcana: +1**

**Athletics: +0**

**Deception: +6***

**History: +1**

**Insight: +1**

**Intimidation: +6***

**Investigation: +1**

**Medicine: +1**

**Nature: +1**

**Perception: +1**

**Performance: +4**

**Persuasion: +4**

**Religion: +1**

**Slight of Hand: +4***

**Stealth: +4***

**Survival: +1**

**Passive Perception: 11**

**Senses: Darkvision 60 feet**

First of all, the "Self Insert" title was clearly a little too on the nose and was giving me premonitions of (insert Jackie Chan voice) "bad day, bad day" ahead.

_Clearly_, I'd been ROB-ed. And, having read so many stories about situations similar to my current one, I could only conclude that the "ROB" in question was obviously just some ignorant asshole me, hen-pecking at a keyboard in order write a story.

And if some asshole me was sitting behind a keyboard somewhere out there in the multiverse, writing me into some story and effectively DM-ing the world around me by rolling dice… That could mean my every effort had a 5% chance to end horribly, even if I didn't just plain fail because of a bad metaphysical roll and through no real incompetence on my own part….

Well, shit.

I could be a generous and lenient DM and enjoyed running (and playing) high-magic campaigns, where creative PCs pulled off progressively more and more hilarious and ridiculous munchkinry bullshit… But I was bad at estimating exactly how "lethal" an encounter the party could take, and I tended to play enemies, not as mindless meat-bags of XP… but as intelligent, thinking killing machines _that want to win just as much as the Players_. Which, of course, meant my encounters tended to be run with a little more… implicit threat to them than you'd normally expect for their CR. I wasn't afraid to have my enemy NPCs outright run away in order to live to stab you in the back another day.

This was such to the point that when I first ran the "Lost Mines of Phandelver" adventure module, the party had nearly been TPK-ed in the Cragmaw Cave, lost a member, and had a single goblin (the Bridge Guard), spot them, escape, and continue to otherwise act so competently that he was almost solely responsible for the Party's near-downfall throughout the whole cave section.

Mind you, this was at _Level 1_ and supposedly a relatively easy set of encounters to get the (likely new to D&D) players introduced to the different mechanics of the game. In the end, they didn't even get to kill said goblin in recompense. He evaded the party and escaped the cave, and everyone at the table has collectively come to call him "Runner Goblin", whom they all dread/anticipate the implied future reappearance of… Yeah, I may have gone a bit too off the rails there, but let it not be said that I'd not stick my divergence out to its end.

Runner Goblin was now basically that party's nemesis and was earning levels as a rogue to further frustrate them. Assuming he survived the whole Phandelver campaign, I'd planned to probably continue his attacks against them all the way into the "Storm King's Thunder" module, which we planned on using as a sequel to the first campaign. Not that I'd likely get to do that now, being stuck in another world entirely…

_Ehem_, digression.

All that aside and more worrying to me at present…

_I was Level 1_.

I was _alone_, a squishy spellcaster in an unknown place (and, in all possibility, time) with absolutely crappy in-character and out-of-character skills in outdoorsmanship… and I was _Level 1 with no party_!

I gulped. I was _so dead_.

An owl's hoot eventually jolted me into action, and I firmly clapped my cheeks thrice, shaking my head. I needed to get out of here and figure out where the hell I'd been (as my character sheet implied) inserted into.

I honestly couldn't decide where I wanted to discover I'd been sent least.

I glanced about at the pervading darkness of the forest and took a moment to, for lack of a better word, metagame.

I _figured_ I probably wasn't asshole enough to write myself at Level 1 into a universe equal to or worse than Warhammer 40K in grim-darkness.

I shuddered.

But, beyond that, everything might as well have been fair game.

As a DM, I knew that if I were sending myself into such a situation, that I (the insert) would be (unless forced otherwise) playing things as careful, slow and steady as possible, stacking the deck immensely to prevent as much uncertainty as I could. I'd game the system if given half a chance, action economy my foes to death. I'd leave as little to chance and the fickle whims of metaphysical dice as feasibly possible, gathering as many "Save or Lose" and "No Save, Just Lose" methods of victory as possible.

I wouldn't have sent myself to another world that I didn't know well (because then I couldn't actually write a story about it with any degree of accuracy), nor would I send myself to a world I knew well without important memories regarding the setting…

Because _fuck_ memory loss plots! I absolutely _despised_ them in shows and literature. They always ruined things for me and served to do nothing but ruin a character, who didn't know what they hell they were doing or on whose side they were for the duration. They basically ceased to be the character I liked for as long as the stupidity of the memory loss persisted.

Even as a joke, I wouldn't write such a story, so I was probably in a world I knew well. Of course, there were plenty of worlds that I'd get absolutely obliterated in as a _Level 1_. I couldn't even count on being able to gain more local powers to supplement my own.

Lacking chakra coils (barring DM fiat), Naruto, for instance, would ruthlessly wreck my shit, as would Bleach, One Piece, or basically any action anime ever that I actually watched. Youjo Senki was a war world, where guns would utterly _end_ me (2d6 damage for a _pistol_ by D&D RAW!), so any world even remotely like it (basically any modern-day world) would probably kill me just as fast.

If I'd been thrown into Faerun or Tal'Dorei (the only D&D worlds I knew enough about -and had the source books for- to write a story in) or my own homebrew world, I was probably also screwed by way of random encounters, since I was currently solo without an adventuring party… And if those didn't get me, then a random dragon, wannabe tyrant, or budding dark lord (which _existed_ in large numbers in said worlds) probably would.

I inhaled deeply through my nose, breathing in the scent of the forest, before letting out a slow exhale. I needed to get out of this damned place faster than fucking _Sonic_.

The question was, then, _how_ would I set about doing that. In school, perhaps my worst subjects were history, geography, astronomy, and science regarding nature and the outdoors. I couldn't even count on newly gained character skills to bolster this ignorance, as my build was that of an arcane caster, not a nature enthusiast.

In other words, I had next to no navigational ability.

Thankfully, "next to no" still meant I had _some_.

Guiding myself by the stars wasn't viable for multiple reasons, chief of which was that my darkvision didn't stretch beyond the natural canopy of trees, and -even if it did- there was no guarantee that the stars I saw would even be _Earth's_, depending on where I'd been sent. Heck, if I _was_ on Earth, the atmospheric haze of pollution could prevent me from seeing the stars _anyway_, depending on my location. Beyond _those_ facts, I wouldn't have even been able to pick out the most recognizable of constellations or the significance of their positioning; I was just that utterly hopeless at astronomy.

The sun obviously wasn't out, so I couldn't guide myself in a definitive north, south, east, or west direction by watching its path across the sky.

However, I did have one thing surrounding me that could give me an estimate of the sun's path: plants, specifically moss.

If I recalled correctly (though I certainly wasn't trusting my rusty knowledge fully), then moss grew facing where the sun shone most. I mean, it was a plant, so that was probably correct?

I really didn't want to risk climbing a tree to search for distant lights. After all, falling damage would obliterate my Level 1 ass if I failed a check at exactly the wrong moment, and I had only a +2 to Acrobatics going for me… and even less for Athletics.

I sighed and stuck my arcane focus orb back in my pocket. Not like I needed it at present; the only spell that really required it was-

I abruptly tasted birdsong, as I was briefly assaulted by detailed mental information regarding my spells.

On second thought, I does appear that, thus-far, only my cantrips will not require I have my focus in hand. Which reminds me, I _do_ have magic, don't I…?

I straightened up, and confidently stated out loud, "[Prestidigitation]," motioning at my pants.

There was a rippling _whoosh_, and, feeling about, I found that my pants were now quite clean, not a speck of dirt to be glimpsed.

"[Prestidigitation]." And now my backpack was clean too.

"[Prestidigitation]." And my shirt.

"Cool," I couldn't help but snort depreciatively. "Now I can _clean_ people to death."

A beat.

I blinked a moment in consideration. Wait, _could_ I do that? It would require a particularly… _unhealthy_ mindset, but I wouldn't call it _impossible_. After all: _magic_.

Being a Charisma-based caster, and a Warlock in particular, was pretty handy for me. No need to worry about the fiddly math of how I was doing whatever the hell I was doing. I just decided it would happen, and it did!

As a Tiefling, I also innately knew the [Thaumaturgy] cantrip, and [Eldritch Blast] rounded out my Warlock arsenal. I mean, unless you had a _really_ good plan, it was almost suicidal to _not_ take [Eldritch Blast] as one of your first Warlock cantrips. Not to say that a Warlock _couldn't_ contribute to a party without it, but… Well, it was kind of the class's primary method of dealing damage as a whole, never mind the fact that Force damage was the absolute _rarest_ damage type for any creature to have resistance or immunity to, so you'd almost always be able to do something with that spell, unless you were facing some incarnation of unfairness like the Tarrasque or a Rakshasa.

Unfortunately, none of those cantrips I _did_ have would help me get out of this damn forest. What I wouldn't give to be a Cleric right now. [Guidance] would be an absolute dream…

_So_, searching for moss it was.

(/o0o/)

The next ten minutes to an hour (I honestly couldn't tell) were… boring, ultimately fruitless, and utterly nerve-wracking, as I tip-toed through the yawning darkness of a cold forest at night, my little area of grey-scale color moving with me and innumerable distant sounds setting the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck on end.

I didn't find any moss whatsoever, no matter where I looked, not even anything remotely _resembling_ moss to the slightest degree.

My pathetic knowledge of flora and fauna similarly gave me no insight into the trees around me, so I had no idea where I could be located in the world either. Of course, my near nonexistent talent for retaining geographical information meant I'd probably still be unaware of where the hell I was, even if I knew what kind of trees were around me… unless they were something super recognizable, like Japan's pink Sakura trees...

On second thought, with this grey-scale sight I currently had going on, I wouldn't even be able to rely on something as distinguishing as color. Dammit.

That said, my stress was mitigated by the fact that I managed to creep about with a smooth, silent grace that surprised me, my limbs almost instinctively avoiding twigs and leaves and my body slipping through gaps in shrubbery with nary a whispering rustle. Heck, not even my tail or backpack got in the way. The ruffling sound of my clothes somehow even seemed muffled by the way I moved.

I was practically a ghost, as I traversed the forest.

Was this… the power of a high Stealth check?

Questions for later.

That said, ultimately, I got sick of searching for what I'd probably never find. Looking for distinct plant-like lumps on another surface in a world washed of color by my darkvision was the purest expression of "searching for a needle in haystack", so I gave it up as a lost cause.

(/o0o/)

I sighed, grumbling, as I eyed the trees around me, a pair of fingers rubbing slow circles on either side my forehead. I didn't want to risk it, but, ultimately, I'd rather get out of this forest, even if it might cost me some hit points.

I took a moment to drop my backpack to the ground, noting the thick length of rope (probably hempen) strapped to the side of it and the sturdy 4-foot+ wooden staff (probably quarterstaff) strapped to the top. No need to risk the weight of my pack pushing things outside my favor.

I strode over to the first tree that appeared serviceable and reached up to grab the lowest branch, fingers hooking into cold bark. With a grunt I hefted myself up, taking hold of the next lowest branch-

-and found myself thumping into the ground flat on my ass, broken branch in hand and hissing, as I landed badly on my tail, a sharp jolt of confusing and unfamiliar pain shooting up my spine.

Spitting invectives towards the entire forest's ancestry, I groaned and spat to the side in annoyance, brushing myself off and rubbing my bruised backside, as I stood to my feet. A quick check of my mental character sheet revealed that I hadn't lost any hit points, but it was probably a near thing.

After such a disgraceful failure, a part of me wanted to give that route of forest escape up as a bad job…, but maybe I could find a tree with obviously sturdier branches to scale.

I considered using [Prestidigitation] to light the top of the dry broken branch in my hand on fire to use it as a makeshift torch…, but there was a not inconsiderable chance of my causing a forest fire through accident or ignorance. And, even then, the branch would probably burn to bits too quickly to be useful. I'd need to find some water to soak the end that I intended to be the torch's shaft in, which should, hopefully, make that side close to nonflammable.

I decided to leave that idea for a later, more desperate for light, situation and stuffed the dry branch into the top of my backpack with the quarterstaff.

Still massaging my backside, my tail lashing about in light of my irritation, I hefted my backpack's straps back over my shoulders and glanced about. An idle usage of [Prestidigitation] had my pants and tail clean once more, as I set about searching.

I squinted at the grey-scale world around me towards the forest's trees, only even lightly considering those with 2-foot thick trunks and branches about 3 to 4-inches in diameter. A few looked viable, but even still…

I couldn't trust anything I perceived in these light conditions.

What if the next tree I tried was also dry with prone to snapping branches? It's not like I had the forester's acumen to determine a dry tree from a "wet" tree just on touch. All trees felt practically the same to me, some just a little more bumpy and bark-y to the feel.

So, sight was the next best thing to completely unreliable, even with the ability to see in perfectly distinct shades of grey. What other sense did I have at my disposal that could detect things that would get me the hell out of here?

Taste was… Yeah, not even going to think about the ways that _might_ be useful. I couldn't smell by licking the air like a snake, and all the other possibilities just disgusted me. A survivalist I was not.

Touch wasn't really useful beyond… wait. Wind. I can feel wind.

And wind carries smells, smells like civilization.

I idly cast [Prestidigitation] on an index finger to hopefully remove germs, before licking it and holding it high, turning myself about to get the direction of the wind.

I closed my eyes to shut out the high amount of information being taken in from vision, using up my brain's processing capacity, trying to also ignore the sounds I could hear and focusing only on touch.

For a few still moments, I got nothing, and then a light brushing against the right side of my face had me turning my finger that direction. The saliva on my finger got distinctly colder in response to the wind.

I grinned. Excellent.

Turning to face the wind, so that I was now effectively downwind, I cast [Prestidigitation] on my finger again, cleaning it, and then began to take deep inhalations of air, trying desperately to parse out differences from the usual forest scents.

After a minute, I… didn't seem to be getting anything. Or, no… Perhaps it was more that I could _almost_ just pick something out, but it was evading me.

I took a slow, deep inhale and exhaled just as slowly. I refused to get frustrated, not when a legitimate source of salvation was within my grasp.

Shucking my backpack to get rid of the distracting feel of its straps pressing into my shoulders, at slowly sat down and crossed my legs, beginning to take slow, deep breaths, as I attempted to shut out all senses but smell.

Some indeterminate time later, my patience paid off in a big way.

A new set of smells tickled my nose in accompaniment to a particularly strong blast of frigid air to the face, a strange set of distinct tangs in the air.

The first one was… salty? Yeah, it smelled sort of like diluted salt. Or, well, what I assumed salt reduced in power smelled like. The smell brought to mind the scent of the sea, so I was maybe near the ocean?

The other smell was recognizable to me, gloriously so, fuming and tangy.

It was the smell of gasoline… or petrol? Whatever, it was very clearly one or the other. I couldn't possibly mistake one of my favorite smells. I mean, granted, it's not like I went out of my way to smell such things, since I was fairly certain that would be hilariously unhealthy, but I certainly didn't shy away when the smell was at hand through no action of my own.

Point was, gasoline and/or petrol meant fossil fuels, which meant civilization. And not just any civilization, _modern_ civilization, which was both relieving and disconcerting to me, because, well….

I was a lone flipping _Tiefling_ in a modern world that was highly likely to be populated primarily by judgmental, nosy, highly-interested-in-experimenting-on-me humans.

I could practically see the torches and pitchforks coming out already.

And, really, that problem wouldn't cease to be so much of one until I could become Level 2 and take the [Disguise Self] at will Eldritch Invocation…

Regardless, there was no other real choice here. I _couldn't_ survive out in the wild. I just wasn't capable of such, and I'd take _maybe_ surviving a modern civilization with *shudder* guns everywhere over _definitely_ not surviving alone out in the wild for however long it look me to hunt down and kill around 30 wild animals (being worth 10 XP each for a CR 0). And that was only assuming I didn't run into something dangerous like a big cat… or a bear.

Yeah, civilization it is.

I snatched up my backpack and slipped it on, [Prestidigitation]-ed it and myself clean, and set off on my way, guiding myself by keeping the cold wind blowing directly in my face at all times.

(/o0o/)

My spirits bolstered by new hope, I made good time. Or, at least, I think I did. It was really hard to tell without the sun or a watch.

Tracking the smells of salt and fossil fuels on the wind, I felt like a bloodhound on the hunt, twisting and turning through the brambles and bushes of the forest.

Cold wind all but froze my extremities and blew through my clothes like they didn't exist, setting my teeth to chattering, but I didn't care. I made no attempts at stealth, all my concentration fully occupied by keeping to my current heading.

It was strange. I'd never been very good with smells before today. Rather, I believe I actually had a weaker sense of smell than the average person. But right now, I felt like some master of living off the land.

After what couldn't have been more than half an hour later, the forest finally began to thin, before clearing up almost completely, as I reached the edge of the woods.

To my left from my current inclined, above sea-level position, I could now see the ocean. Or, at least, I could see nearby water. My darkvision stretched out only so far, and the water was the farthest thing from lit. Not even starlight brought its features into relief, a dark haze blotting out all but the brightest of them that I could see in the sky, no longer obscured by the natural forest canopy.

Briefly and abruptly, a small notation flashed across my vision, before fading away.

**[You Escaped the Woods and Found Civilization: +75 XP!]**

Wait a second, I get XP from completing goals and/or checkpoints and not just from encounters?

_Nice_. Heck, _more_ than nice. That meant that an important or difficult enough non-combat goal could advance me just as much as getting into deadly scraps.

Not a hundred meters beyond the edge of the forest, a modern 21st century city sat, sprawled out in all its questionable glory.

The only reason I could even see the dang city from so far away was that bright illumination, from street lights, cars, and tall office buildings, cut sharply through the darkness. The city appeared to possess sprawling docks that were, from this distance, shrouded in near pitch black. The only reason I could tell they were docks at all was the odd shimmering out on the large body of water located directly beside the city.

Illuminating a small bit of the water with their reflections and meager glare, the shimmering out on the water appeared to be a collection of lights attached to some sort of structure? I really couldn't make it out at this distance. Maybe it was an especially tall boat? Those lights looked to be placed a little too high up for any boat that might dock here though.

I squinted harder, blinking slowly, as I tried to get my eyes to adjust enough to the darkness to grant me a modicum of better quality detail. Eventually, the blur on the water actually cleared up enough for my eyes to make out little things like how it didn't bob in the slightest and cut a definitively non-boat-like shadow, as the distant stars on the horizon brought into view the shape of some manner of structure.

A building on the water? Maybe it was some kind of oil rig. Though why the city would have an oil rig so close was beyond me. I didn't know anything about the proper placement of such things. That said… I was starting to have renewed suspicions about where exactly I'd ended up.

After a minute of consideration, I shook my head.

Whatever, that could wait for later. And by "later", I mean day-time, when I'd actually be able to see worth a damn.

I turned back towards the city proper, and a fresh round of [Prestidigitation] castings made sure I was as presentable and non-hobo-looking as I was going to get.

Keeping a wary eye out for observers, I set off down the small natural incline…

…and into a world rife with monsters in human skin.

(/o0o/)

**AN:**

**We'll just see where this goes. I've got the whole second chapter and the general gist of the third chapter written down.**

**Hello all! Heh, I haven't been doing so much writing (or, more correctly, I've simply been swamped with so many plot bunnies that I can never get around to actually posting anything), and I've otherwise been having fun thoroughly enjoying all the other great fanfiction out there.**

**But now, the time has come… I LIVE!**

**Thus, do I introduce my latest work, writing for my and your own viewing pleasure: The Devil You Know (a Worm/D&D 5e Self-Insert).**

**It's my first time actually trying to properly write in first person, so any advice is appreciated. I am fully open to any constructive criticism that might be offered, but do try to restrain any flames.**

**After all, "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires". ;)**


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